A/N: Chapter 2's here, and I'm finally getting to know this place better. Good news for ya! Might've said this before, but watch out for bad grammar and a few typos. I did my best to clean this up before I sent it in, but I'm not perfect. Also, I still hate the way my writing sounds, so if you hate it, don't get upset. You're not alone, I assure you.

Sunrise
Chapter 2: The New Hunter

Late that night, X pulled himself out of bed. Apparently he had suffered too much excitement
that day, and now he was paying for it with insomnia. Having nothing better to do, he
wrapped his bath robe around him and slipped his feet into thick, comfortable socks. Cold
metal floors could do horrors to anyone, and he was going no short distance. Assuming
he made it past the night shift, the trip he intended to take was a long one, but at night
there were watchmen randomly patrolling almost every hall. Still, sneaking out past curfew
was nothing new to him, and he knew well how to get to most any point on the compound
without being caught.

Typing in his room's code, he slid the door open just wide enough to peek out into the darkness and made a cautious scan of the hall, making sure there was no one there to see him
before creeping out and padding quietly down the hallway. At the end of the corridor, he
pressed his back firmly against the corner, listening intently for the sound of footsteps.
When he heard none, he carefully risked a glance around the way. Thankfully, no one was
there, so X ducked down and strode over to the double doors on the far wall.

There, he held his hand to the icy metal of one door, warming it a little before he pressed
an unprotected ear to it and once again listened. Satisfying silence came to him again, and
he snuck into the stairwell and started upwards toward the fifth floor.

It was easy enough to find Zero's room even if X had not known what the number was - his was
the only one in the entire hall with his infamous "Z" emblem in the center. He had done it
as a joke one day after watching a Zorro movie with the intent of taking it down some time
later, but apparently he either never got around to it or decided to leave it be. In no
time, X was staring right at that unmistakable trademark, his knuckles rapping lightly at
the door. He waited patiently for a minute or so, but when the blonde reploid didn't respond
to his calls, he knocked again, harder the second time.

That got Zero's attention. He groaned loudly enough to be heard even outside in the hall,
exaggerating his irritation. A minute later the door opened, revealing a very groggy Hunter
in next to nothing. X blinked, green eyes now quite wide and cheeks flushed an interesting
shade of red, shocked to silence.

Zero blinked a few times, trying to rid the last of sleep from his eyes as he nearly glared
at the smaller reploid impatiently. It wasn't like this was the first time X had come to his
room at all hours, waking him from his slumber, and if he could expect the same as previous
nights, they wouldn't be getting any sleep until the next night. "Well," he sighed, running
a hand back over his hair to try to smooth down some of his wild locks. "What is it you're
wanting this time?"

"Z-zero?" X gulped. He realized with embarrassment that he had been staring and quickly
looked away. "Y-you're... um... you're..."

Cocking his head to one side, he followed X's recent line of sight and blinked, then
narrowed his eyes back at the blushing Hunter. "X... It's called underwear."

"Yeah, I know that! But I've never seen you in your underwear before!"

Zero sighed loudly, tossing his hands halfway up in the air more for the impression than
anything. "You've seen me in my boxers before," he groaned, grabbing X by the arm, dragging
him into the room before someone caught them, shutting the door behind them, and flipping on
a dim set of lights almost all at once. "What's the difference? A little more skin,
whoop-de-frickin-doo. Now, what makes you drag me out of my bed this late at night
again? Huh?"

X fidgeted nervously, twisting his hands one in the other for a moment, finding great
interest in the gray carpeting that was the floor. "I... uh... I couldn't sleep..."

"Manalive, X, is that the only excuse you can come up with?" With a loud yawn, Zero rolled
his computer chair over and motioned for X to sit, then plopped back down on his bed before
the sheets had a chance to cool off. "So why are you really here? You know we're gonna get
hell if they find out we've been holding all-nighters like this without permission."

Nodding his thanks, X took the seat he was offered. "I know. You only tell me every time I
come over." He had been smiling before, that same playful, childlike smile he never seemed
to lose, but it faded, giving way to a more serious, concerned expression. "Zero, what was
wrong today, when we brought that robot back with us? You... I've never seen you that way
before and it just... worried me."

"... Ah, that." Zero allowed himself to stretch out on his back over his covers, sighing
deeply as he relaxed. "It was nothing, really. It's just that I saw him and for some reason
he struck me as familiar, like I'd seen him somewhere before, but I can't remember him. It
just bugged the hell out of me for a while, that's all." He turned his head slightly,
shooting his friend a half smile, but X's expression remained.

"Maybe... you've seen him in a dream?" X ventured to ask, tilting his gaze up to meet the
other's.

Zero diverted his eyes for a moment, pretending to think on it. "No, don't think so."

"Oh, Zero, come on. You know what dreams I'm talking about."

"Yeah, I know," the blonde sighed, a little more harshly than he meant, "but I don't want to
talk about it."

An uncomfortable silence settled between the two, and X pressed himself back against the
chair a bit more firmly, lowering his gaze, hurt. "I'm sorry," he whispered, guilt reforming
his features. "I didn't mean to..."

Zero stared blankly at the ceiling, cursing himself for being so forceful with the
especially emotional reploid. Strange, it was, that he should put up with this Hunter when,
with anyone else, he would simply have told them to tough it out and walked away without
even a second thought about it. There were times when even X got too mushy on him and he had
to ask himself why he bothered to deal with it instead of just pushing him out the door and
on his way. There was something about him that tugged at strings no one else could reach.
Why, he would probably never know, but he endured it anyway. "No, I'm sorry," he apologized
softly. "I didn't mean that to sound like it did. You know I don't like talking about that
though."

"Yeah, I know... I'm sorry for saying anything." X ventured to glance back up to his best
friend, but found him instead gazing intently at the ceiling, avoiding him. "I guess I
should go back now, huh?"

Rubbing one eye, Zero half glanced over at the smaller reploid. "That might be a good idea,
considering what tomorrow's scheduled to hold."

With a shy smile, X nodded. "I know."

Somewhat hesitantly, Zero dragged himself away from the comfort of a warm bed to see his
friend out the door. Once goodnights were said and done, he plopped back down in bed face
first and was out before he could even pull the sheets over his nearly naked body.

--------------------

Nope. Not gonna do it. Not this time. Not gonna... Oops, losing control... Okay, got it
back. Not gonna do it...

Ketsu fought it. There was no way he was going to give in to it this time. But slowly, his
will began to slip, and ultimately, broke. Pushing his chair away from the computer screen
slightly, he stretched as far as he physically could and yawned.

"Damnit, you wuss," the medic cursed himself, then looked over the data onscreen one last
time.

For the last week, he had completely immersed himself in his latest project: the "Forte
Project," as he had jokingly named it. Every minute he could spare, from the waking hours
until he turned in for the day, he spent in the tech center, toiling over the memory core
and any other part that yielded him access to any kind of data the new robot had to offer.
Had it not interested him as much as it did, he wouldn't have lost any sleep from it, but
his findings, especially of late, kept him coming back to the computer screen as often as he
could.

The robot was indeed older than X, and by several decades at that. A slightly deeper search
into his memory files revealed that he was also familiar with a Dr. Thomas Light and a Dr.
Albert Wily, two of the greatest robot designers in the history of mankind - truly an
amazing discovery. How the machine had survived to this age, however, was a complete
mystery. There were rumors and records of others like him from that period, yet for all
anyone could tell, they had either been destroyed or had fallen to the wears and tears of
time. And this one had survived...

Where X was concerned, strangely enough, the bioroid didn't seem to have even the slightest
hint of the azure Hunter's existence, as X was terribly disappointed to learn.
Ketsu also found out other neat little things about him: he was called Forte, he had a
counterpart named Gospel, and as well as being built primarily for battle, he had an intense
rivalry with someone. Most files showed only brief portions of battles and names.
Unfortunately, just as who and what Gospel was and who this rival was exactly were also
another item left up to the imagination to identify. Most of Forte's data had been either
corrupted beyond recognition or erased completely. What was left was barely enough to even
identify the robot, let alone yield anything about the span of time during which he lived so
long ago. But, among other things, Forte had faced a terrible "end," as Ketsu discovered
nearing the end of the week.

One day, while searching through the more recent files, he came across a memory clip that
showed fragmented scenes of a particularly gruesome brawl. The file was so severely damaged
that all audio data had been wiped and of the entire three minutes it lasted (the longest
readable memory file discovered by far), only about twenty seconds of it gave anything worth
seeing at all. The remainder had been degraded to static or fuzzy images, all but destroyed.
What did play correctly revealed a dark room, something like a warehouse, and a number of
inactive or badly mangled machines.

One, a red and either black or gray one, closely resembled Forte himself. With nothing
better to go on, Ketsu could only assume they had the same creator, or at least similar
designs. That robot also seemed to have met a horrifying end - it was missing alarmingly
large portions of its body, including its head and all but one of its limbs, that seemed to
have been severed with a burning knife or blade of some sort. Horrible as it was to think
about, the robot appeared to have been tortured to death - nothing from that time period
could have moved fast enough to remove such large portions of such a body very quickly.
The last second of the file that showed anything contained a large green light and a red
mass that could have possibly been a third bioroid and its weapon. The remaining minute of
the file was too badly corrupted to view. When X had seen it, too curious and determined to
heed the reploid medic's warnings, the images haunted him for hours afterward, and he sat
alone in his room deep in thought for the rest of that day.

Luckily, there was one part of Forte's data core that was almost completely saved: his
personality data. It seemed that time had spared the shell of armor that encased his
personality chip to some extent. It had taken Ketsu the better part of a day to retrieve it,
but over 60 percent had been copied without trouble. It was also the only part of Forte's data that he had been able to save over 20 percent of, all of which he deemed an incredible accomplishment given the bioroid's condition.

Another yawn, and Ketsu watched the download bar reach its stretch to the end. It had almost
completed when a warning suddenly popped up on the screen. Puzzled, Ketsu read it and his
jaw fell open in shock at what it said. The next few minutes he spent filling the air with
the sweet sound of his creative vocabulary before slamming his fist down on the arm of his
computer chair.

"Well, son of a... I don't believe this," he groaned, rubbing at his temples and staring at
the screen angrily. He took a moment to settle himself down, then began typing away at the
keyboard again. An instant later, a program opened itself for him, and he typed in a few
more commands before finally coming to the data screen he was looking for. He read its
contents and sighed - the transfer had not completed, nor could it ever.

Groaning loudly, he closed out the program and disconnected the wires that ran from one end
of the computer to the reploid lying restrained on the table. Well, he thought
dejectedly, at least he looks like he did. And it was true. The new body he had was
almost an exact replica of his bioroid form, but he had been given added features. He had
the same white-silver hair, same purple blazes under the eyes, same blood red irises, same
color and pattern to the armor. It was all there, but with a more powerful blaster, a few
inches added in height just for fashion, and a humanoid body rested beneath all that armor,
fused together until they were separated by the reploid's command just like most any other
reploid. The only thing Ketsu felt any regret about was the unusable data and his decision
to omit a few files, such as the "final battle."

The idea popped into his head once, but he shot it down in an instant. He didn't need this
reploid to remember something like that yet. They would just have to wait and see how he
took to his new life before they revealed to him such horrible images of his past.
Stretching again, Ketsu shut down his workstation and headed up to his bunk. So close,
yet so far... Damnit...

--------------------

Morning came all to quickly for some and not fast enough for others that next day. It was a
Saturday, a day of rest for most of the Hunters in the compound, but for some, it was just
the beginning of the working hours. For a certain azure-armored reploid, dawn hadn't come
fast enough. He sat in his room, playing games of chess with himself, reading through books
and magazines, assaulting Zero's email account with pointless letters ranging in content
from the exact time of day down to the very nanosecond to how many petals he'd counted on a
clipart flower, or just plain lying in bed for nearly five hours before the long-awaited
announcement finally came.

"X, I know you're awake," Ketsu's wearied voice came over the intercom. X nearly jumped out
of his boxers, but instead of finding himself nude, he ended up on his floor, sitting in an
unnatural position horizontally in his computer chair.

"Yeah," he groaned, rubbing the back of his aching head. "You alright? You sound terrible."

"Eh, that's what working late does to you," the doctor explained, feigning a peeved
attitude. "I'll be fine. Anyway, you know why I called. It's the big day. I'll try to drag
Zero out of bed too, but if I can't I'll need your help."

"Is Dr. Cain already in the med lab?"

"No, we've decided to keep him at a safe distance until we can be sure Forte is stable.
Don't need the old man to be around if he goes off and starts blasting at stuff, do we?"

"No, I guess not. Okay, I'll be there ASAP."

There was a soft chuckle from the other end. "Yeah, I know you will. Now move your blue
butt. You've had me at this all week and I don't want to be kept waiting."

X couldn't help but grin at that - he was well aware of Ketsu's sense of humor, and hearing
it come out in his friend that morning only served to push him out the door that much
faster. Feeling more and more giddy and nervous by the minute, he laughed to himself on the
way out, a wild idea suddenly popping up in his mind.

Ohh, Zero was going to hate him for this...

--------------------

It was half past nine when X all but bounced through the door to the med lab followed by a
miserable-looking Zero who rubbed constantly at his stomach. Shaking his head at the
childish and pained reploids, respectively, Ketsu regarded X with an accusing stare. "What
did you do to him?" he asked suspiciously.

"Nothing," the blue Hunter replied and immediately fought himself to suppress a laugh.

"He pounced on me," Zero growled, still holding his hurt belly, "that's what the little
bastard did."

Now hurt as well, in a different sense, X turned to his crimson friend, apology all over his
face. "I said I was sorry, didn't I?" he cried as pitifully as he could. "I was just having
a little fun with you. Yeesh."

Rolling his eyes, Zero took a deep breath and released it slowly. "Listen," he began as
gently as he could, "I know you meant it only in good humor, but this is no way for a
soldier to behave, do you understand?"

"Yeah," scoffed X, all the more wounded. He hated being a Hunter sometimes, especially when
it restricted him from doing as he felt. There were times when he just could not contain
himself, and it was true that, as a Hunter, he should have more self-control, but the
getting used to having that self-control was more challenging than he had first thought when
he signed on.

Ketsu cleared his throat, more in making an attempt to lifting some of the tension that had
suddenly fallen on the room than to bring their attention back to the reason they were all
there that morning. "If you're ready," was all he said. When neither Hunter objected, he
regarded X in particular and told him, "You do realize that he most likely remembers nothing
from the past now, so it's not too probable that he will be able to answer any questions
you have."

Wordlessly, the azure Hunter nodded, and, satisfied, Ketsu turned to Forte and reached over
to a point on the back of his neck. His fingers skillfully found the spot he was looking for
in no time and pressed at a small area there. Before he had even withdrawn his hand fully,
Forte's eyes fluttered open slowly, as though he was coming out of a nice, long nap.

The new reploid took in his surroundings easily at first, but as soon as he realized he was
in an unfamiliar place, his eyes shot wide open, more so when he noticed he was not alone
and also tied down.

"Don't panic," Ketsu said softly, offering a kind smile. "No harm will come to you. My name
is Ketsu; this is Zero, one of our best commanders. The one standing with him is X, another
of our best, but not yet a commander. You're in the med lab of Maverick Hunter
Headquarters."

This appeared to ease the black reploid - his eyelids lowered so that he didn't look as
though he were about to pop them out of his head, and he rolled them all around, taking in
everything with interest. "Why... am I here?" he questioned slowly, as if unsure of himself.
"And why am I in these restraints?"

"You might not remember," the medic explained, "but you were found not more than a week ago
by those two there. You were badly damaged and in dire need of repair, so they brought you
here and I fixed you up. Your original body was so out of date I couldn't work with it, so I
had your memory files and all that I could salvage transferred to this body. I hope you're
not too upset about that, but it's also why we have you strapped to that table. We weren't
sure how you had adjusted to the change."

Forte stared at him curiously for a moment, then turned his head over to X and Zero,
blinking at them with just as much interest as they gave to him. "So... Why can't I remember
anything?"

X cocked his head to the side, aiming a puzzled gaze at the medical reploid. For his part,
Ketsu shifted his weight from one foot to the other for a moment, unsure exactly how to
explain that one. He had told no one about the problem that had come up the night before,
but had instead opted for telling them all at once. "Most of your data was corrupted; our
programs couldn't even recognize the files, let alone copy them. What was readable was
damaged in part, so your memory would have been fuzzy had the body you have now been able to
run what I had saved. Unfortunately, there was a complication and your memory
self-destructed when I tried to transfer it over. Evidently the one who built you encoded
only your memory with a security device that would prevent copying of any kind." He paused a
moment, shrugging helplessly at both X's and Zero's stunned stares. "I must say that I'm
quiet befuddled by it all. Even with the technology I have access to, I couldn't find the
cause of it, but for some odd reason what I could get of your personality went through just
fine, if it's any comfort to you."

All at once, a loud beeping sound filled the room, assaulting the ears of those who had them
and startling Forte so that he reflexively jerked, rattling the restraints that held him
still. "What the hell is that?" he asked as he shifted his gaze between the three other
reploids in the room. They'd obviously grown accustomed to the noise - not one of them
jumped at the sound. Instead, Zero turned and ran from the room, his long ponytail waving
behind him. X, being a little more polite, offered a short goodbye, saying that he was
needed elsewhere before he left.

Shaking his head slowly, Ketsu stepped over to Forte and pressed a button under the table he
lay on. "It's another attack," he groaned.

"Attack?" the black reploid asked, mildly alarmed as he sat up and pushed himself off his
seat to the floor.

"Yes. They've been coming like this for the last few weeks out of no where." The medic
turned to another machine and began fiddling with a few wires there, his head slightly
bowed. "No one knows where it all came from, but it began not long after our first general
disappeared. Now, don't get upset over this and tell no one I said this to you, but there's
rumor about a war being at hand." He paused, holding a hand to his temples. "I'm sorry I
woke you up during such a time. Maybe I shouldn't have..."

"No," Forte said firmly. In his surprise, Ketsu turned back to him, blinking at the
determined expression he was met with. "It's alright. I know I can fight and take care of
myself. Just tell me what I need to do. I'll help you."

This only earned him more blinking and staring. "But, you've only just awakened," Ketsu
protested gently. "You should at least let me give you a check up before you even leave the
room to make sure you're running as you should. As for fighting, I'm sorry, but I can't
recommend it right now. Standard procedures, you know."

He had a point, Forte admitted to himself a little disappointedly. What if he were to go out
and something didn't work right? Where would he be then? "Alright, you win," he sighed. "But
after this I want to help out. I don't remember anything, but somehow I know I was meant to
fight. Why else was I created with this?" As he said the last word, he lifted his right arm,
calling his hand back inside the lower half to become a potentially deadly plasma cannon.
With a smug half smile, he added, "Might as well make use of it."

To this, the medic gave his own understanding smile, nodded, and gestured for Forte to sit
in a chair beside the machine he'd been messing with. "That'll be fine, so long as you don't
use it against us," he allowed. He was well aware of this new reploid's capabilities - he'd
been through his systems enough to know by then just how he could work. From what he'd seen,
Forte held a great potential. Even despite his memory loss, who or what he could become
could very well rival even X or Zero if he chose to take himself above and beyond his
limits. Although it was certainly something to reckon with, for the moment Ketsu was just
glad that he was on their side.